Blue Planet
by Y-ko
Summary: A meteor lands in Castelia City, laboratories across the world are bombed in a coordinated attack, a sentient virus plots to destroy humanity, and one oblivious scientist is put in the center of it all when a self-professed alien saves-slash-abducts him and orders him to save the world. A somewhat different OT story.
1. Big Bang

"_A circle of fire coming in the sky, noiseless, one rod long with its body and one rod wide. After some days these things became more numerous, shining more than the brightness of the sun."_

- Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs circa 1500 BC

It was 3:47 on the morning of April third when the object first appeared on the sensors, and by then, it was already too late. There was no time to send up a rocket to knock it off-course, no satellite near enough for a squadron of Porygon to contain it. As computers, cell phones and pagers across the continents sprang to life, the world's greatest astrophysicists and defense technicians shook their heads one by one in grim consensus. There was nothing they could do but wait and pray. Still, calls and data continued to beam between research stations and universities and military compounds, carrying the last thin rays of hope that someone, somewhere out there, could tell them the way to avert the coming disaster.

But all it did was anger the creature further.

* * *

Sidney wasn't woken by the blaring of alert klaxons or emergency pages, but by the buzzing of his alarm clock several hours later. Nobody called in a biologist to deal with a giant flying rock from space. The first he even heard about it was a news bulletin that popped up on his cross-transceiver as he was eating breakfast. _METEOR HEADING FOR EARTH—EXPECTED TO MAKE IMPACT IN SOUTHERN UNOVA—LOCKDOWNS IN PROGRESS IN CASTELIA CITY._

He stared at the headline for a few seconds, pensively chewing his cereal, before switching his attention back to far more pressing matters: a text message, sent earlier this morning, from an unknown number.

_had fun last night! Call me ;)) _

He had no idea who it was from. Okay, he had a small idea. It was someone he'd drank with at a bar last night, obviously, but he couldn't think of anything definite beyond that. He had the image in his head of a peppy brunette woman showing him pictures of her pet Lillipup, but the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if that could have been from last Friday instead. Maybe it was the one with a lip ring and a degree in something artsy and pretentious? What was her name…?

Not remembering was nothing new. His days and nights had been running together more and more over the past few years. Maybe he ought to do something about it, make some changes that would bring him some excitement, but then again, maybe this dullness was just part of a responsible adult life. That was what he wanted in the first place, right?

He also ought to call his mystery woman back. Maybe not right now, but later. Tomorrow, definitely. At least before Monday. For sure.

His thoughts were interrupted by a chime and another text. The sender was labeled "Douglas," but he would have known who it was anyway from the trademark punctuation. _Where are you?! Archer is getting impatient!_

He exhaled loudly, put down his phone, and finished shoving his breakfast into his mouth. Time to get on with the day.

Heading for the tiny bathroom in the corner of the loft, he picked his way across books, magazines, and papers that had been strewn about (_Genetics: From Genes to Genomes; Popular Biology; Aliens Among Us—What Big Science Doesn't Want You to Know_) as well as the occasional empty can and bottle. He took a quick shower with water that couldn't settle on a temperature between icy and boiling, and afterwards did the bare minimum to make himself presentable, brushing his teeth and shrugging on a white button-down shirt and the same jeans he'd worn yesterday. He was an awkwardly tall and gangly man, all angles and twiggy limbs, with shaggy brown hair and eyes that drooped and sank into his skull. His face was coarse with stubble, which he ran his fingers over before deciding not to shave; it wasn't like there was anyone to impress at the lab.

Once he was done, he grabbed his backpack from the spot beside the door, walked down the three flights of stairs to the bottom of the converted warehouse that sat under his loft, and then folded himself into his cramped and clunky car. For a sprawling suburb, Nacrene was laid out efficiently, but it would still take a small eternity to travel the few miles to the university in early-morning commuter traffic.

As he was driving, the radio host of a morning show interviewed a physicist who was helping to plot the predicted course of the meteor, as well as a geologist who would be analyzing the rock fragments after it landed. Listening to them, he felt a brief stab of envy. Lucky bastards were going to get all sorts of attention now that their fields were suddenly relevant to big-time current events. He could be doing interesting things with his degree too, if only a certain _incident_ in Kanto several years ago hadn't sent everyone opinions on genetic engineering back to the dark ages.

Still, he couldn't complain too much. His studies had him sleepwalking more and more through his routine each day, but they kept him busy and promised a decent future, even if that future was likely to be limited to splicing vegetables with other vegetables for the next thirty years. Maybe he even ought to consider himself lucky. Nacrene University was renowned for its curricula on the sciences, and before the Kanto incident, they had had one of the foremost genetic engineering programs in the world. Now they just had one of the few genetic engineering programs left in the world, period. Ten years ago, there was no way they'd have accepted someone like him for graduate work. Now, they practically begged him to come.

He parked his car several blocks away to avoid paying the meter and ambled down the streets until he reached his building. His lab was on the ground floor, through majestic (albeit weathered) corridors of gleaming wood. Inside was less impressive: a pen of half-height cubicles and battered tables and desks with scuffed tile walls and floors. It was also right next to the cage room for the experiment Pokémon, and there were always squawks and squeals that managed to work their way through the supposedly soundproof walls. As he walked through the door, he saw that three of his colleagues were already there, as usual. Dani, a bright-eyed biochemist, was hunched in a corner watching news coverage of the meteor on a small LCD television and making small, eager noises. Arcadia, molecular biologist, was camped at the table furthest away from her, flipping through a stack of papers with a furrowed brow and occasionally pausing to note something on her tablet.

And then there was Doug.

"Sidney! Where were you?" His wiry, bespectacled partner talked like he typed, with a liberal helping of exclamation points. He shoved a travel cage containing a Pidove towards his face. The little bird cooed stupidly. "We've been waiting!"

"You said we were starting at nine. It's pretty much nine." He glanced at his watch just to be sure. 9:27. Close enough. "You could've just started without me."

"Sidney! Did you hear?" Dani popped up in front of him, her Kantonese accent thick with excitement. "There's a meteor, and they're worried it might land in Castelia City, so they're bringing in psychics to protect everyone. The whole city's under a state of emergency—" The way she gushed about it, a meteor strike might as well have been a parade of Cincinno carrying cotton candy. The youngest among them, Dani was also the only one who had managed to hold on to her soul through years of mind-numbing labs and arduous exams, possibly because she was immune to negativity.

Doug interrupted. "No, see, like I said, it's not a meteor until it hits the atmosphere, until then you call it a meteor_oid_…"

"Again with this! Could the both of you just shut up about it? I've got another thirty physio quizzes left to grade, and you're not helping." Arcadia hunched over the papers again and grumbled. He felt sorry for the students unfortunate enough to have her as a TA. "Don't you have work to do?"

Sidney sighed. "All right, Doug, let's just get this over with."

They went into the adjoining room, where Doug placed the Pidove in the test cage. It was a large rectangle boxed in by plastic and split down the middle by a one-way mirror.

"Which one is this?"

"Sierra." Doug had insisted on nicknaming all of the lab Pokémon. The lab's identification numbers worked fine for everyone else, but he just had to get attached. It made things all the more difficult for the Sidney when medical research students came around to run trials that inevitably resulted in the death of one of his partner's favorites.

The Pidove caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and cooed again, fluffing out her feathers and extending her wing to greet what she apparently _still_ thought was an entire second Pidove. "You'd think she'd have figured it out by now," Sidney said. But the Pidove's date didn't last for long, because her trilling had woken up the monster behind the glass. The beastly Pokémon shuffled onto its haunches and its bulging eyes fixed on the Pidove through the transparent side of the mirror. Its unkempt mustard-yellow feathers quivered in anticipation as it watched what it apparently _still_ thought was its lunch. It ground its beak with a soft clacking noise.

"Archer! Sierra! Let's get this done!" Doug announced. Sidney picked up a camcorder and pointed it down at the clear top of the cage as Doug continued. "Form, color, and reasoning trial, day five, number thirty-six, featuring subject five-five-six-A-one 'Archer' and control five-one-nine-S-six 'Sierra.'" The Pidove chirped at what she had come to recognize as her name, while the Archen tapped his talons on the cage floor indifferently.

At the Pidove's feet were three shapes: today they were a blue circle, yellow triangle, and red square. The test was straightforward, and focused on, as the name suggested, basic shape and color recognition as well as simple counting. It was the sort of test almost any Pokémon could pass with a little bit of training. "Sierra," Doug stated clearly. "What color is blue?" The Pidove eagerly hopped forward and pecked the blue circle. "Right! What shape is a triangle?" She stepped to the right and pecked the yellow triangle in the center. "And how many corners are in a triangle?" The Pidove cocked her head for a moment before chirping one, two, three times. "That's right! Good girl!" Doug opened the hatch on her side of the cage and slid in a small platter of Oran berry seeds, before directing Sidney to point the camcorder at the other side.

"Archer." The Archen didn't respond except to snap his clay-colored beak at the Pidove. "Archer, what color is green?" Still nothing. "Archer!" Doug repeated, louder this time. The Archen snapped to attention, letting out a shriek somewhere between a braying Bouffalant and a shrieking Staraptor before running towards the front of his cage. He passed right over his symbols—yellow star, green circle, blue triangle—to slam his head against the clear plastic. The cage shook from the impact, but the walls held, making the Archen squawk and slam his head against it again in frustration.

"What color—" Doug was cut off by another plaintive shriek from the Archen. "Archer, I know you're upset, but you can do this!" The bird had just caught scent of the thawing pinky Rattata waiting on the table as a reward and was now scrabbling against the cage wall with his talons in an attempt to reach it. "No. Food later, colors now."

It went on like that for the better part of an hour. This was the fifth day of testing, and the Archen had yet to successfully pick out any colors or shapes, let alone count them. But then, they didn't actually need him to. This test was about the intelligence gap between modern and fossil Pokémon, a subject that was already pretty well covered in scientific literature, but which Doug had insisted on running his own experiments for, "just to be thorough." It was always the same conclusion, though: the cognitive abilities and trainability of modern species had only come about as a result of tens of thousands of years of selective breeding and cultivation by humans. Without the benefit of that, fossil-restored Pokémon, whose genetics and brains were identical to those of their primitive ancestors, were almost universally duller than a concussed Patrat and controllable only through brute force.

Doug didn't agree. "I don't think he's stupid, just stubborn," he always insisted, just as he did today once the testing was over. He was cradling the Archen in his arms like a baby, something that the feral Pokémon would bite the fingers off of anyone else for trying. "If we could just find a better way to communicate with him…"

"Leave it to the Poké-Psych majors. It's not part of our thesis." Personally, Sidney felt Doug had just wanted an excuse to play around with the birds. Right now he was running a finger through the scraggly red feathers on the bird's neck. The Archen's eyes were rolled back contentedly, and he had even started purring—purring!

"All right, all right. Start writing up the results and I'll see what we can do with them. I'm going to get these guys back in their cages." Doug unlatched the test cage and extended an arm to the Pidove, who at first hooted anxiously at the sight of the predator, but then hopped on.

Sidney popped the memory card out of the camcorder and went back into the other room to transfer the files onto a computer. Try as he might (though he hadn't tried _that_ hard, admittedly) he just couldn't feign the same kind of excitement Doug had for these experiments. Then again, this project had been far from his first choice. He'd been hoping to study the origins of human DNA, before it became obvious that it was going to take a brighter mind than his or even Doug's to make any headway there. At least humans didn't scream and bite you on the wrist every time you took them to the lab for a skin sample. Most of them didn't, anyway.

He plugged the memory card into the computer and began moving the video files over. A spreadsheet of the past month's trials showed that this was just the latest in a long series of tests that never went anywhere. The Archen failed at object manipulation, spatial awareness, memory tests, and anything else that required more brainpower than eating or screeching, _which they already knew he would_, so what was the point of all of this? Couldn't they just focus on analyzing his genetic code? Last week he had lost a maze race against a Sewaddle, for Arceus' sake.

As he waited for the transfer to finish, he went over to the television by Dani and watched the updated coverage of the meteor(oid). It seemed that its fiery tail was becoming visible in the sky, and tactical defense Pokémon were spread all across Castelia City, waiting to throw up psychic barriers at a moment's notice. After a few minutes, Doug re-entered the room, nodded at him silently, and went to work on the computer.

Sidney stifled a yawn. It was going to be a hell of a long day, and he'd need help getting through it. He turned away from the television and walked over to the cabinets on the side of the room, intending to pour himself a cup of coffee from the battered pot that sat there.

It was a decision that saved his life.

* * *

_Cover image is by FigBeater from deviantART. Used with permission._


	2. Ex Astris

It was too little, too late. The city's humans had gathered most of their population into underground shelters and tunnels, and those remaining had assembled with squadrons of enslaved Pokémon on the rooftops of evacuated buildings. But it would not be enough.

It was visible now in the sky, a great fireball shooting directly towards the center of the city. A sharp whistle rang out through the still air, and as one, each Pokémon began to manifest a psychic barrier. Walls of light knit together into an iridescent dome that shimmered like an aurora in the sky. It was patchwork, changing patterns and thickness every few meters, but it expanded far enough to encase the entire center of the city.

For just an instant the asteroid was close enough that the flames and debris in its tail could be seen. Each Pokémon that was able released waves of telekinetic energy towards the sky, attempting to push the asteroid back into space. It wavered almost imperceptibly, slowing for a fraction of a second, before accelerating once again and crashing down into the glittering dome. The wall shattered instantly under its impact, telekinetic fragments flying off and fading into nothing. With nothing left to stop it, the asteroid slammed into a towering skyscraper, pulverizing it into dust before finally crashing into the ground. A shockwave of superheated air tore through the cracked dome, incinerating the Pokémon and humans still within. The earth shuddered and heaved, sending neighboring buildings crumbled to the ground in a rain of concrete, glass, and smoke. Windows and streetlights shattered, throwing shrapnel across the abandoned streets. Then it was over, and silence fell, pierced only by the wails of fire bells and car alarms.

It was then that the watcher felt several distant minds blink out like dying stars. _No! _The horrible twisting sensation, still nameless—like fear, but worse—rose in its chest once again. It was too soon—too soon—_too soon—_for these events to be in motion already. Impossible. But even as it thought this, several more of the minds on the horizon disappeared.

There was no more time. Suppressing panicked thoughts under a blanket of focus and meditation, the watcher's eyes glowed with pale blue light, and its body shimmered in the air and vanished with a small pop.

* * *

As Sidney reached for the coffee pot, three things happened at once.

In Castelia City, the meteor crashed into the ground, killing hundreds and destroying reducing several of the proudest structures of Man to rubble.

Thousands of miles from the planet's surface, a few of the watchers bowed their heads and offered silent prayers for humanity in what was to come, only for a moment, before the hivemind overwrote their sympathies and returned them to their tasks.

And back in the laboratory, a few meters from Sidney's feet, the several pounds of explosives packed under the tiles detonated.

He couldn't recall the explosion, or the blow that came after it. For all he knew, he had simply blinked, and then he was lying on his back with his head pounding like it had been cracked wide open. Greasy orange tongues licked around the corner of his vision, and there was the acrid scent of something burning.

He tried to push himself up, but his body didn't budge, and something by his ribs stabbed him like a knife. He yelled out in pain, and when he forced his eyes open again, saw that there was something lying on top of his chest. He couldn't get a good look at it, but it was long and flat and _heavy_. Maybe a table or filing cabinet.

"Hey," he tried calling, "is anyone…" His voice gave out before he could finish. Breathing had become hard and very, very painful. He gasped for breath, smoke-filled air filling his lungs, and listened for a sign that someone had heard him, but was no response, only the drone of the fire alarm and the ringing inside his own head. And a screeching. A very familiar screeching.

With tremendous effort, he lifted his head an inch from the floor and craned his neck to the side. A plume of smoke wafted away and revealed the form of the Archen. He was standing above the flames on a pile of debris, one wing beating frantically while the other hung limply at his side, and his beak was fixed open in a nonstop_ skree-skree-SKREE!_ He caught Sidney's gaze with those beady little eyes and leaped from his perch, hopping deftly across the rubble until he reached his side, where he resumed his shrieking—directly into his ear, now.

"You can't—_ngh_—help me out here, can you?" He made a halfhearted attempt at a joke, but the Archen only gave him a sharp peck. "Guess you can't even get yourself out. Stupid…" His words trailed off into a fit of coughing as smoke and dust stuck to the back of his throat. His body spasmed and his chest seized up, driving the hard corner of the debris further into his ribs. He managed to draw in a few heavy, painful breaths, but each was shallower than the last, and the smoke burned his lungs.

As starbursts started to dance in front of his eyes, he felt an odd sense of serenity envelop him. The scene became detached, peaceful, like he was watching his own death from above. So this was how it ended for him, suffocating under office furniture with a feral lab animal pecking at his corpse. Not what he would have guessed. He stared blankly towards the ceiling, now completely obscured by black smoke, as the air took on a sickly orange glow. Flakes of falling ash stung his eyes and turned everything blurry.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light above him. He blinked. Through teary eyes, all he could make out was the silhouette of something small and vaguely humanoid, with two blurry rings of lights that blinked in series—red, yellow, green. It lifted one set of lights and waved them slowly around the room, as though scanning for something. When it finally turned to him, two glowing blue eyes snapped open. The Archen shrieked and jumped onto his arm, flapping his one good wing at the intruder. Unperturbed, it floated down towards him, getting close enough that its stubby legs almost brushed his shoulder blades, and then turned itself over in midair, somersaulting slowly forward until its face was parallel an inch from his. His vision was filled with its eyes, huge and empty with pale pupils that seemed to focus on him through the smoke. It lifted one of its hands, the blinking lights glowing brighter and faster until they formed a steady multicolored halo, and then touched his chest.

It was as though his body was being folded across a great distance. For an instant, as well as lying on the laboratory floor, he felt himself stretched across traffic-choked roads, green forests, and sparkling blue waters. And then the force that was anchoring him let go, and his body snapped forward like a rubber band being released through a miles-long pinhole. There was a whooshing of wind and warped images, and then suddenly it was over, and he was staring up at a clear blue sky.

He gasped from the shock, and clean air filled his lungs. His chest expanded freely and gratefully as he coughed the acrid smoke from his lungs, though his ribs still burned with each breath. After several minutes, when he could take deep, ragged breaths without going into a renewed coughing fit, he wriggled himself into a sitting position and wiped tears from his eyes. The back of his hand was covered in something gritty. Slowly, he opened his eyes and squinted to see fields of white and blue stretching in every direction.

It was sand, he realized slowly. Nothing but sand and sky, all the way out to the horizon.

"What?" His voice came out in a harsh rasp. Clutching his bruised ribs, he rose to his feet with a grunt, swaying back and forth, and pressed his free hand to his forehead to shield his eyes against the beating sun. The air was hazy and thick with shimmering heat waves. There was nothing and nobody else in sight, except for far off in the distance, where he could barely make out the faint blue outlines of skyscrapers, and a few feet away, where the Archen was squawking and running in clumsy circles, its bad wing trailing in the sand.

_And the other Pokémon_. He spun in place to see it hovering behind him. Now, with clear vision and a clear(er) head, he recognized it as an Elgyem—one of Unova's many weird, reclusive psychic Pokémon. It stared into him with huge, unblinking, pale green eyes. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Uh…"

There was an odd high-pitched whining, like the kind that came from tuning an old-timey analog radio. It was closely followed by a shock that snapped his head back. A voice reverberated in his head—no, not just _one_ voice, but dozens of them, all playing at once at high speed.

"_Vous êtes en danger."_

"_Usted está en peligro."_

"_Anata ga kiken ni sarasa rete iru."_

"_Sie sind in Gefahr."_

"_Jesteś w niebezpieczeństwie."_

"_You are IN DANGER."_ It seemed to know that it had found the right words; all the other voices dissipated so that the last one could play at full force, pinballing around his skull. He clutched the sides of his head and staggered, almost falling down again. _"YOU ARE IN DANGER. THIS IS A WARNING. THE SURVIVAL OF YOUR KIND IS AT RISK. YOU WILL_—_WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?"_ He had instinctively clapped his hands over his ears to protect against the booming voice that was rattling his brain. Obviously, it did no good.

"Please stop shouting," he said lamely.

"_I AM NOT SHOUTING."_

"In my head." He flinched as another foreign brainwave crashed into him at full force, rattling his brain like he was being physically shaken. His consciousness wavered under the pressure. The Elgyem stared at him blankly for a moment before its finger-lights flashed and he felt its psychic presence separate into smaller pieces. The probes dove deep into his brain, probing, as though trying to determine whether he was lying. Gradually, the light behind its eyes lessened until it was hardly visible, and the tension in his mind dissipated into a light tugging.

"_The human mind is more fragile than I was led to believe,"_ it said, by way of an excuse. Its voice was mercifully quieter now. _"It does not matter. You will come with me and—"_

"Wait. Just… Wait." He held up his hands. His mind was still somewhere on the laboratory floor. "What are you talking about?"

"_You are in danger,"_ it repeated simply.

"Yeah. No. The explosion. I know."

He felt it buzzing around in his mind. The red and yellow lights on its hand blinked as several words rose to the surface. Collective. Family. Species. _"Humans are in danger,"_ it clarified at last.

"Okay. What kind of danger? How?"

"_The asteroid that fell today on your planet contains the data of an extraterrestrial life form. It is plotting to destroy your species. Humankind is approaching an extinction event. You will ensure that they do not reach it."_

He stared at the Elgyem, panting slightly. "Okay. All right. I'll go to the police with this, if that's what you want." For whatever good that would do. He winced as the bruised spot on his ribs throbbed again. "Maybe take me to the hospital first?"

"_No. Do not show yourself in any of those places. They will be expecting you there."_

"Who's 'they'?"

"_Those who have already attacked you. Those who you must stop. If they find you again, they will kill you."_

He didn't know how long he stood there, looking from the Elgyem to the skyline to the still-screaming Archen and back again, trying to process what he was being told. It felt like a dream. He was in a coma from the explosion, and this was all a big dream. No, wait, maybe the explosion was part of the dream. Maybe he'd been hit by a car on his way to the lab. Or maybe it started when he slipped in the shower last week?

He ran his fingers through his hair, already growing damp with sweat and—was that blood? Yeah, definitely blood. Not good. "How do you even know all of this?"

"_It has been foreseen."_

"You mean like some kind of prophecy?"

"_We do not rely on superstition. The data available tells us that without our interference, there is a ninety-nine point six percent chance events will happen as predicted, and of those remaining, you have the best chance of success."_

"Then what exactly am I supposed to do?"

"_You will stop those who are planning your species' destruction."_

"But _how_? How, specifically? What do you want me to do?" Sidney watched the Elgyem expectantly, waiting to hear what sort of crazy answer it had for this one (muster a military force against a coming invasion? Hijack a satellite and use it to destroy them? Meet with the hostile alien face-to-face and ask it politely to stop?), but none came. It was completely silent. And it might have been his imagination, but as he stared, he thought he saw its eyes shift meekly away. "Oh, don't tell me—you _can't_ tell me. You don't even know, do you?"

"_At present time, we lack the data necessary to—"_ He cut it off with a short chuckle.

"I don't believe this. You come all the way down here to recruit me for some grand plan to save the world, except there is no plan—what do you expect me to do, just wing it?" No answer. He shook his head, inducing a thick wave of vertigo.

"_It is your duty to your species to stop the coming extinction."_

"I'm not doing this. I'll go tell all of this to the police or the government or someone if you want, but you can find someone else to play secret agent."

"_They will kill you."_

"I'll take my chances."

"_You will do what is asked of you."_

"No. This is stupid. If you're not a hallucination, find someone else to do it." He turned back to the hazy skyline and wondered how far away he was from the city, how long it would take to even reach the road.

He'd barely taken one step when pain exploded in his head. He shouted and pitched forward, falling face-first into the sand. It was an intense and excruciating pressure, like his brain was swelling up against the sides of his skull and being hammered back into shape.

"_YOU ARE NOT LISTENING."_ The fiery glow in its eyes was back, and the colors on its fingers strobed like an epileptic stoplight. _ "YOU ARE, STATISTICALLY, HUMANITY'S BEST CHANCE FOR SURVIVAL. THIS IS YOUR DUTY TO YOUR SPECIES. YOU CANNOT REFUSE."_

"I cuh—you—not…" He didn't even know what he was trying to say. He wasn't a strong man, and his brain couldn't put together anything more than gibberish. But the Elgyem took it as a refusal, and squeezed its fingers together. Another psychic pulse sent all the nerves in his brain haywire. His body convulsed and writhed on the ground, and he felt himself screaming.

At last, the signal cut off, and his body went limp. He gasped for breath, lying still for the several minutes it took for his brain to start firing normally again. Slowly, as he regained control over his limbs, he pushed himself back up to a sitting position. A few thick drops of blood slipped from his nose, and he reached up with shaking hands to wipe them away.

"_The human mind is fragile."_ He flinched to hear its voice inside his head again, quiet though it was. _"I do not want to harm it any more than is necessary, but if you continue to refuse, there is much more I can do to you."_

He took in a deep, ragged breath and drew his knees up to his chest. "What do you want from me?" It wasn't snide this time, just beaten.

"_It will begin its work through human agents. You will travel into the city and seek them out."_

"How…" He gave up on getting an answer before he could even finish the question. Unsteadily and jerkily, he rose to his feet. His legs quivered underneath him, but held his weight. "Fine. Fine. I'll do it."

"_You are reasonable."_

"Yeah, I've been told that."

"_You should begin traveling to the city."_

He tried to focus his eyes on the buildings. "Can't you tel—teleport us there?" He stumbled over the word as the thought of the last unpleasant trip returned to him, but that unpleasant sensation was nothing compared to the sinking feeling he got when he realized the Elgyem had gone silent again. "Well?"

No answer.

"If you can just help me out here…"

"_It expended my reserves to bring you this far,"_ it said at last. _"It will be several days before I am able to teleport again."_

He couldn't hold back another short bark of laughter. Of course. So it wasn't enough that he'd just been blown up by terrorists and then kidnapped and given a seizure by a psychopathic alien; now he got to cap it off with a trek across the desert. It could never be just one thing. That was his life.

Sidney looked up at the sun hanging high in the sky, down at the Archen, and back to the distant skyline. With as much dignity as he could muster, he wiped the mixed sweat and blood from his upper lip and knelt down to grab the Archen, which had finally run out of energy and was panting in place like an exhausted wind-up toy. He gripped him in both hands as he struggled in vain, trying to bite his arms.

It would be a long walk.


	3. Variance

One of the few qualities Sidney had ever been praised for was his ability to stay calm under pressure. But to be totally honest, it didn't really work that way. It was more like how a Slowpoke bitten on the tail would take a few seconds to say "ouch"—the primal instincts in his brain, like fight-or-flight or even basic fear, were always a little slow to kick in. And the more dangerous or bizarre the situation he found himself in, the longer it always took to come to grips with it. So as he trudged through the sand dunes, all he felt was a strong sense of irritation.

"Why," he croaked repeatedly, "the desert? The middle of the _fucking_ desert. Of all the places. Why?" The Elgyem didn't give him an answer, no matter how many times he asked.

It turned out that they were only a few miles from the main road, but they were the worst few miles he could recall walking in his life. His body had been battered in the explosion; his ribs stabbed him with each step, and his burned and raw mouth and throat made his thirst unbearable. Above him, the sun beat down mercilessly. And even after he found his way to the road, nobody wanted to pick up a beaten, ragged man with two unruly free-range Pokémon. He tried to flag down at least a dozen passing cars and trucks, but none so much as slowed down. Eventually, he resignedly slumped back onto the ground to watch them pass by one by one.

He was beginning to wonder madly if he'd have to start a new life as a hermit out here in the desert, because he sure as hell wasn't going to make it the rest of the way to the city himself, when he heard the rattling of another engine passing by. This one, though, was followed by the high-pitched squeal of brakes. He squinted at the road to see a huge eighteen-wheeler pulled up on the shoulder, gleaming in the sun. A woman's craggy face appeared at the window.

"What're you doin' out here, kid?"

It turned out her name was Rogen, a tough older woman with short-cropped black hair and arms like a Machoke. She drove big trucks for a living and threatened to throw him out of the cab at sixty miles per hour if he tried anything "funny." He saw her as a winged and haloed angel singing hymns from on high.

Twenty minutes and a couple bottles of water later, his head was clear again… Sort of. It was hard to think when the Archen kept being triggered by everything from the noise of the motor to the sun glaring off the buildings they passed and the heavy metal songs blaring out of L's radio—he hadn't stopped squawking since they'd stepped into the cab. Sidney even resorted to forcefully clamping his beak shut with his hands, but the little bastard was strong and kept squirming out of his grip to bite him.

And that wasn't even the worst part.

His shoulders seized up and jerked back a little, again, as another probe reached him, burrowing into his brain like a little mental parasite. With each wriggle in his head, another memory came unearthed, playing disjointedly like spliced-together fragments from an old film reel. _Crowded room at night, the thump of bass, bodies pressing in, the soft brush of lips against his skin._ "Can you not—"

_Bedroom ceiling, single hairline crack from the center to the top-right corner, both hands clutching the bedsheets as the sounds come from downstairs, hollow cries keening with the wind._

"Okay, just—"

_A dim forest, leaves and grass slick with rain. The scrape of rough bark, a smile turned twisted. The pinch of a knife—_

"Hey! Knock it off!" The tendrils in his head scattered like cockroaches under a floodlight. His shout made the Archen jump and Rogen glance suspiciously at him again. "Look," he dropped his voice, "if you want me to help you with this, you can't go digging around in my head."

"_It has been established that you do not have a choice in the matter. You cannot choose to leave."_ The Elgyem, currently hovering by the window, was as impassive as ever. He swiped at it lazily. Before his hand could get anywhere near it, his arm locked in place, frozen by telekinesis. The Archen drew in his feathers and hissed at the increase in psychic pressure.

"You don't need to go spying on my life to do this… Whatever it is you're trying to do, right?"

"_Gathering more information about this world will allow for the formulation of a better plan."_

"But do you _have_ to do it that way?"

It seemed to consider the question for a moment before lowering its blinking hand, finally releasing his arm. _"It is not necessary, but other methods will be less effective."_

"I'll give you 'less effective;' if you don't knock it off, I'll…" Well, the Elgyem was right. He really couldn't do anything about it. He grumbled and pulled the hissing Archen against his stomach to muffle him. "What's a big, advanced alien want to do with human memories anyway?"

_Alien_. As if. Nobody with a knowledge of biology beyond what was taught in high school believed Elgyem were actually an extraterrestrial species—their physiology made it not just unlikely, but impossible. Somehow, he doubted broaching the subject with the Elgyem would get him anywhere.

Surprisingly, his empty, half-formed threat seemed to work. For the next few hours of the drive, the Archen was still fussing, the deafening music kept coming from the radio, and Rogen swore more and more frequently as they got closer to the city ("Get'cher head outta yer ass and lookit the road, damn hippie! You drive like a Woobat!"), but the Elgyem stayed out of his head.

Some time later, as he was staring catatonically out the window, Rogen slammed on the brakes. The truck squealed to a stop that jerked him forward and launched the Archen into the dashboard. Blinking to attention, he noticed for first time that the scene outside was wrong—really wrong. They were in Castelia proper by now, but the glittering buildings and whoosh of traffic had been blocked out by clouds of thick white dust and the cacophony of horns. The wide street in front of them was packed with cars stalled bumper-to-bumper against one another, with clusters of news vans and police cars parked along the shoulder. In the small gaps between cars, throngs of people and Pokémon swarmed like Combee. Everything beyond the end of the block was obscured by the haze of white, but as far as he could tell, the traffic jam seemed to go on forever. When L switched off the radio, he heard a piercing chorus of sirens coming from every direction.

"Holy shit, what happened?" he asked, prompting both Rogen and the Elgyem to look at him sideways. He shrugged, and Rogen grumbled something inaudible and reached out to twist another knob on the radio. A news program came on at a deafening volume.

"—_latest reports from Castelia City, dozens are still missing as the search through the area devastated by the meteor strike continues…"_ Oh, _right_, the meteor. That had happened. Hell, that was why he was here in the first place. He rubbed the back of his head and winced as his fingers brushed the deep gash on his scalp. Being blown up, stranded in the desert, and brainwashed by an alien had a way of messing with your head. Now he remembered, this morning—seemed more like a week ago—he'd been watching the news report with Dani. Right before the explosion—_shit, the explosion, what had happened to…?_

"Going to try and find a back road around," Rogen was saying, breaking through his thoughts. "Bet this mess goes all the way through Mode Street. You probably want to walk from here." Right. More like she didn't want to be stuck in a traffic jam for hours with a shrieking bird Pokémon—and he didn't want to be stuck there with her anyway. He got the impression it would be hazardous to his health.

"Right. Thanks for the ride."

"You're just lucky I felt sorry for you. Dumb-ass trainer types, walking out into the middle of the desert like that, the hell d'you think's going to happen?" Not bothering to correct her on either front, he just grabbed the Archen off the floor and hopped out of the cab onto the busy street.

It was chaos. Cars and bodies pressed in on him from every direction, honking loudly. Through the horns, human and Pokémon voices reached his ears, shouting, screaming, and sobbing. Emergency workers in bright reflective jackets attended to the people on the sidewalk, blocking some from moving closer to the scene and consoling others who were collapsed or crying. A helicopter whirred close by overhead, temporarily drowning out all other sounds and sending down swirling plumes of dust that stung his eyes.

"One meteor did all this?" he found himself shouting to the Elgyem as he waded towards the sidewalk.

"_It was an asteroid, not a meteor."_

Why did people have to be so pedantic about this? He was reminded of Doug earnestly pointing out the differences between mete_ors_ and meteor_oids_. "I thought it was just going to be, like, a little rock. Didn't they have people set up to stop it?"

"_There was little that could be done."_

"Then what… Are people… Dead?" The creeping silence in the back of his head told him that it was a stupid question.

A morbid impulse made him want to get closer to examine the impact site, but the solid mass of people and police barricades ahead told him that it would be like trying to make his way to the front of a mosh pit at a concert. He'd only been standing again for a few minutes, but his legs were already shaking like rubber underneath him. He stumbled with each person that jostled him. It was all he could do to push his way to the sidewalk without tripping or losing grip on the Archen. He needed to find a place to rest—and maybe eat. Hunger was starting to gnaw at him from his cavernous stomach.

It took another couple miles of walking before he found a motel that wasn't packed to capacity. Apparently, all the news reporters and technicians here to cover the meteor needed places to stay, and so did people who'd been living in apartment buildings damaged or destroyed by the blast; at least, that was what the desk clerks told him. He suspected some of them just didn't want to deal with him. So much for people banding together after a catastrophe—he looked like all the rest of the dirty, disheveled victims of the crash, but sympathy already seemed to be running thin.

Eventually, after turning down a few narrow streets in what looked like the bad part of town, he came across a shabby two-story motel whose "Vacancy" sign was still glowing. By then, the sun was disappearing behind the skyline, and he could feel his legs about to give out. As he pushed open the door and walked onto the stained carpet of the lobby, he felt the Elgyem prodding in his head again. He tried to ignore it, not wanting to look crazy in front of the motel staff who would decide his fate for the night. Still, as he approached the desk, the clerk gave him the mother of all scowls.

"What d'you want?"

Really, he thought, shouldn't they be nicer to someone who'd clearly just escaped death itself? Though he supposed the Archen fluffing his feathers and glaring from the crook of his arm didn't do him any favors. "Just need a place to stay."

"'S nineteen thousand a night."

"What, seriously?" Judging by the look of this place, that was bald extortion.

"Don't like it, go someplace else." A crooked smirk settled on the man's pockmarked face. There wasn't anywhere else.

Sidney grumbled and shoved his hand into his back pocket, only to have a vivid flashback to the image of his wallet still locked away securely in a desk drawer at the lab. Well, probably not so securely anymore. "Oh."

"Problem?"

"Kind of." He ran a hand through his tangled, dirty hair and put on a strained smile. "Don't suppose you'd be willing to let me open a tab…?" The man snorted.

"Friggin' deadbeats. Get out of here."

"Come on, we can work something out." He really didn't want to sleep outside.

"Quit wasting my time. Get out of here before I…" Suddenly, the clerk's voice trailed off and his glowering face went slack. Sidney glanced around and saw the Elgyem with one glowing hand raised and pointed towards the man. Before he could ask what it was doing, the man snapped back to attention, though his eyes were slightly glassy and shone with a barely perceptible blue light. He reached underneath the desk and came up with a key card, which he placed on the counter slowly and deliberately. "Room twenty-three," he intoned flatly. "Over on the left."

Sidney reached forward and gingerly picked up the card, watching the man's eyes. They followed his hand sluggishly, slightly unfocused, like they were looking straight through him. "Uh. Thanks?" The clerk gave no response. Sidney walked quickly down to hallway on the left, before whatever had happened to him wore off. When they were well out of earshot, he muttered to the Elgyem, "What was that?"

"_The human man was a hindrance."_ Its tone was curt, almost peevish. Looking it over again, he saw that its eyelids were drooping and its shoulders slumped forward, making its body appear hunched in midair.

"If you can do that, why do you need me to agree to help you at all? Can't you just…" He waved his hands vaguely, but stopped short when the Elgyem fixed him with a stare that sent a tingle down his spine. Best not to ask, then.

He reached his door and slid the card into the slot on the handle, then jiggled it up and down several more times before the red light turned green and the lock clicked open. Inside, he flicked on the lights to reveal, as expected, a dingy and cramped room furnished sparsely with a cheap double bed, a night table, an ancient tube television on a wobbly-looking stand in the corner, and a door leading to a closet-sized bathroom. To Sidney, it might as well have been the Hotel Richissime.

He went straight for the bed and sat down on the side with a sigh of relief, feeling the rusty springs creak under his weight. The Archen hopped from his arms and began scratching his claws along the foot of the comforter.

"_What is your purpose in staying here?"_ He groaned a little as the Elgyem's voice came into his head again.

"What's my—? It's a motel. It's where you go to sleep." Okay, so there were other things you could do in motels, but he wasn't going to get involved in any of that.

"_Why?"_

"Because it's getting late, and I'm too tired to do anything else." His whole body quivered slightly as his strained muscles finally began to relax. He didn't know how he'd even managed to make it this far; by all rights, he should have collapsed somewhere out in the desert.

The Elgyem's drooping eyes focused and narrowed, and the lights on its hand began blinking again. Sidney groaned and flopped onto his back, dragging a pillow over his face. "No. No more fucking lights, okay? You know I don't know what the hell you're saying." Talking to it was hard enough without it trying to communicate in alien Morse code half the time.

The Elgyem went silent for a while, and Sidney began to drift off under the comforting darkness of the pillow, until its voice rang through his head again. _"You have chosen to stay here, in squalor."_ He sat up, blinking blearily, to see the Elgyem's gaze drifting critically across the discolored bedsheets, barred windows, and cracked plaster ceiling.

"Were you paying attention? It's the only place I could get. Besides, it's not that bad." It was at least neater than his apartment—but then, that said more about his housekeeping skills than anything. "If I'd known you could get me in for free, I would've picked somewhere fancier." It turned its eyes back to him, and he felt the weight of its disapproval bearing down on him. What the hell was this thing's problem? What did it want him to say?

One of his biggest problems in dealing with the Elgyem, he figured, was that he'd never been much of a science fiction buff. The few theories and clichés he knew about things from space were only because of Doug, who had had a _thing_ about aliens and xenobiology. Anyway, Doug could probably tell him how to shut this thing up, no problem. He'd have to ask him…

It struck him that there was an easy solution to all of this. He reached for the phone, which had been bolted to the surface of the bedside table, legends forbid anyone try to steal a thirty-year-old hunk of plastic. Near his feet, he noticed, the Archen had torn several long strips out of the comforter with his beak and was digging around in the white fluff underneath.

"_What are you doing?"_

"Making a phone call." If he could just remember the number, that was.

"_To whom?"_

"What are you, my mother?" Oh Arceus, no, even the Elgyem wasn't crazy enough for that. He shook off the thought uncomfortably. "I'm calling Doug."

He felt it prodding at his head again, and wearily shooed it away. _"Your colleague."_ The response came slowly.

"Yeah. He's really big on all this sci-fi shit. Aliens and stuff, he knows way more about it than I do. He's the one you should be talking to about this." Not that he would pawn this psychopathic Pokémon onto his worst enemy, let alone a friend, but Doug was the kind of guy who would write up descriptions of imaginary non-carbon-based ecosystems just for fun. He would probably love this.

His head was frazzled and sluggish by now, and he found it nearly impossible to concentrate. It took several minutes of thinking, drifting off into unrelated tangents, and then forcing himself to focus again just to get past the area code. It wasn't until sometime around the fifth digit that he noticed that the Elgyem had gone silent. It was a welcome change at first; it was hard enough to focus _without_ it using his brain as an intercom. But the thing about psychic connections, he was starting to realize, was that they were… Complex. Multi-layered? He couldn't put words to it, but the buzzing in the back of his head felt one way when the Elgyem was yelling at him and another when it seemed annoyed, or distant, like body language. And the prickling, heavy silence coming through now was identical to what he'd felt in the desert—once when he'd asked it about their plan, and once just before it had admitted it couldn't teleport them away—and then again in the city, after asking about the death toll. All were times when it hadn't wanted to answer, because the truth was something Sidney didn't want to hear.

"Something you should be telling me?" He kept his voice casual, but the Elgyem startled all the same, jerking in midair. It started flashing the lights on its fingers again—slower this time, like he would understand them if it just slowed down. "Don't give me that. I know you think I'm stupid, but I can tell when someone's lying to me."

"_I have not lied to you."_

"Why should I believe that?" He stared it down, watching as its eyes shifted uncomfortably away. He repeated himself, louder this time. "What aren't you telling—?"

"_Your colleagues have each passed to the Matrix."_ The answer came so abruptly that it took Sidney a moment to realize it had spoken at all.

"What do you mean? What matrix?"

"_The great vault which preserves our memories and knowledge for future generations."_ It watched him carefully, as though waiting to see his reaction, but the only thing he felt was blank confusion.

"I don't… What are you talking about? Is this a reference to something?"

"…_Humans do not have this."_ He wasn't sure whether that was a question or a statement, but he suddenly felt it rifling through his mind again, picking up words and throwing them aside like he was one big thesaurus. Sleep. Immortality. Otherworld. _"Your afterlife."_

His chest felt like it had been struck with a great weight, like he was back in the lab lying under the filing cabinets again. "You're saying—they're dead?"

The green light on its hand blinked in confirmation. _"Yes. I apologize for the misunderstanding; our knowledge of human religion is limited."_

He gripped his chest, which was burning again. The air had become thin and empty. "No. That's not—they're not—you're lying."

"_I have not lied to you,"_ it repeated. _"You must have realized by now that they could not have survived."_

"No."

"_What did you think had happened to them?"_

"I—they got out. I got out, right?"

"_Only with my assistance."_

"And you didn't help them too? You just let them _die?_" He slammed his fist into the headboard behind him. It rattled violently against the wall.

"_When I arrived in your laboratory, you were the only one left alive."_

The room was closing in on him. He shut his eyes and grit his teeth. "So there was nothing you could do? Really?"

"_There was nothing that could be done."_

He leaned back against the headboard, his hand throbbing impotently at his side, and inhaled deeply. So they were gone. The stern-faced Arcadia, who'd given up having any sort of social life in order to finish her master's degree two years early. Dani, who'd left her family back in Kanto and come here for a chance to study here. And Doug, with his nicknames, and even the stupid little Pidove from the lab. Gone. It was just him and the Archen left.

"Joke's on you, I guess," he said at last. "They were all way better scientists—better _people_—than I'll ever be."

What was he supposed to do now?

He sat in silence as the sun gradually set, bathing the room in long shadows. He was stuck here, stuck trying to stop some nebulous evil organization with only the clothes on his back and a psychotic alien to his name, and all of his friends from the past several years, his last trump card for getting out of this, were all dead.

What _could_ he do?

There was nobody left who could help him.

_Well_, a little voice in his subconscious told him, _there was probably still_…

No, that was stupid. It wouldn't work.

Would it?

Ah, fuck it.

He mechanically reached for the phone again, dialing the numbers in a daze. There was still one person he knew, one person who obsessed over conspiracy theories and aliens, and who had to still be alive, because he was far too paranoid to let anyone kill him. The line on the other end rang several times, and then picked up with a click. He braced himself. "Matt—"

"Who is this? How did you get this number?" The voice was unnaturally low and creaky, like a prepubescent boy trying unconvincingly to sound like the Elite Four's Marshal.

"Matt, it's me—"

"Why are you calling from an unsecured line? What's the passcode?" It got more frantic and higher-pitched with each word.

"I don't remember the damn passcode, Matt, you know that." He rubbed a hand over his face in exhaustion, but the voice wasn't done talking.

"—_never _call on an open line, there could be people—"

"Yeah, okay—"

"—spies listening in, the government can do that now to anyone they want—"

"Okay—okay. Listen. Matt. _Matt_." There was finally a break in the ranting when the other caller had to take a breath. "Look, I know all that already. I wouldn't be calling like this if it wasn't important." Legends knew he didn't want to talk to him any more than absolutely necessary. "I need you to help me out."

There was a pause, followed by a long, crackly inhale. "Is this Sidney?" the voice asked at last.

"Yeah."

"You're _alive?_" Sidney rolled his eyes. He could've at least addressed that first.

"For the moment. I need you to—"

"_Don't_!" He winced and held the receiver away from his ear. "Not on the phone. Not on _this_ phone. You need to come see me and we'll talk in person."

"All right. Can I come over tom—" The line clicked and went dead. He stared at the phone dumbly for a minute before putting it back in its cradle.

The Elgyem was swimming in his head again. He weakly pushed it away. No more of that. He just wanted to sleep. He needed to _sleep_, and then this long and stupid day, or dream, or whatever it was, would finally be over.

Within seconds of lying down again, he'd passed out into a deep slumber.


	4. Interphase

He struggled to remember why he felt dead.

Waking up with a splitting headache in a place he didn't recognize wasn't exactly new to him. Sure, it had happened less since in the several years since he'd stopped partying, but back during high school and undergrad—man, those had been the days. But it was never _this_ bad, not even the time when he'd blacked out at a party during Hell Week and woke up handcuffed to a flagpole. His body felt like it had gone six rounds with a Machamp, and he swore there had to be a crack right down the middle of his skull.

Gradually, as his eyes adjusted to the morning light pouring in through the slats of the blinds, the events of the last day came back to him. The explosion. The desert. Everyone was dead, and he was going to be dead too if he didn't do something soon. Oh, and he had to save all of humanity.

Right.

He got up slowly, groaning as his joints creaked and popped like an old man's. He started to stretch, but quickly stopped when his bruised ribs throbbed in protest. The room around him was blurry and out of focus, and seemed to be spinning slowly. Squinting, he made out the Archen roosting comfortably at the foot of the bed in his nest of fabric scraps and cotton fluff. The Elgyem was over to the side, hovering in a seated position a few inches from the floor with its eyes closed. Neither stirred as he rolled out of the bed and shuffled to the bathroom. The floor pitched around him like he was drunk—god, what was wrong with his head? He should really see a doctor. Maybe the Elgyem would let him if his brain started falling out of his ears.

The bathroom was tiny, barely any bigger than a coat closet. The fluorescent lights buzzed and sent searing pain through his eyes; he quickly switched them off again. The light filtering through the tiny clouded window near the ceiling was just enough to see by, and with it, he glimpsed his reflection in the mirror. He looked—well, like someone who'd been blown up and sent on a forced march through the desert. His face was still smudged with soot from the fire in the lab, and underneath a sunburn spread across his nose and cheeks. His hair was greasy and matted with sweat and, yes, a little bit of blood. He probed the back of his head for the cut again and winced, seeing stars.

He was a little too tall for the shower, the water wouldn't heat up, and the stall was almost too narrow to turn around or lift his arms in. Not that he could move that much, anyway. His body ached with each movement, particularly the purpling bruise spread across the left side of his spindly chest. Still, by the time he was finished, his headache had let up somewhat, and his body was moving a little easier. He pulled his grungy clothes back on and ran his fingers through his hair before checking his reflection again.

Well, it was lucky he didn't care _that_ much about how he looked.

As soon as he opened the door again, he found himself face-to-face with the Elgyem.

"What do you want?" he asked roughly. His throat was still sore from yesterday.

"_Where are you going?"_ He winced and rubbed his temples as the pounding started up again.

"You said I had to hide from whoever, right? I know a guy who can get me off the grid. I'm going to see him."

"_Where?"_

"His apartment's a couple of miles away, shouldn't take too long to get there."

"_I will come with you."_

"No you won't." Aaaand that did it: the Elgyem's eyes narrowed, its fingers flashed, and a new wave of nausea washed over him. "Look," he continued warily, "this guy is paranoid—like, stupidly paranoid—and if I brought a psychic Pokémon anywhere near him, he'd freak. Besides, you need to stay here and keep an eye on Archen."

"_I am __**not**__ a…"_ Words flashed through his mind again: mother, shepherd, servant. _"…'Baby-sitter'!"_

"Yeah, I know you don't like it, but I can't leave him here alone. He'd probably try to eat the phone or something. And I'd get way too much attention dragging him through the subway. So this is how it has to be."

The Elgyem's pale green eyes shifted around for a full minute as it considered this. _"Your plan makes sense,"_ it finally admitted with an air of great reluctance.

"I'm not totally stupid, you know. I can think things through on my own." He slipped his sneakers on and pushed the door open, stepping into the hallway. "I'll be back in a few hours."

"_You will be back."_

"That's what I said."

"_You __**will**__ be back."_ Its fingers flashed a menacing red. _"I have placed a psychic lock on your mind. It can only be removed with your death. If you try to run, I __**will**__ find you."_

He froze, hand still on the doorknob, and turned back to the Elgyem with an open-mouthed stare. What could he even say to something like that?

"Yeah. Okay. Like I said, a few hours."

* * *

Rogen had been right—traffic was a nightmare. He wasn't even driving in it, and it still affected him: emergency detours around the blasted part of the city had disrupted bus routes, collapsed and compromised tunnels had halted the subways, and Castelia's citizens were not taking it well. The street was packed with vehicles spewing exhaust into the air, drivers leaning on their horns and shouting at one another to _move_.

Nobody seemed to know what the hell was going on, but after talking to a few dozen confused people and bumming a transit token off of another, he managed to get packed onto an overcrowded bus heading in vaguely the right direction. There was no room to sit, the air was thick with sweat and B.O., and a new elbow landed in his bruised ribs every time the bus started or stopped—which was every few feet, given the state of the roads. He felt like it might have been faster to walk, but he'd had enough of walking.

As they moved away from the center of the city, putting more distance between themselves and the crash site, traffic thinned out, and they started making better time. He took the opportunity to think—mostly about food. Oh, he was hungry; his stomach felt like a big empty pit. Unfortunately, all the places to eat in the city were ridiculously expensive, and he doubted he could panhandle enough for a full meal. He'd have to hurry this up, get back, and have the Elgyem hypnotize someone into giving up their breakfast.

Thinking about it only made it worse, but food was the only subject he could focus on. His head was stuck in gridlock, the same as the central streets. He'd hoped that all of this would start to make sense once he'd had a chance to mull it over, but his mind kept bouncing off of the big, pressing issues. Aliens, terrorists, death—it still felt like a dream, where you couldn't press too hard against the walls, or the whole world would collapse in on you.

When the bus dropped him off on the edge of the residential area, he was no closer to getting any answers, and decided he would put off thinking about it for one more day.

The apartment complex he was looking for was only several blocks away from the bus stop, but Sidney had never had the best sense of direction, and the maze of poorly-planned streets made everything that much more complicated. He hadn't been down here in some number of years; the last time he did, he'd still been attending Castelia University.

Eventually he found his way to a towering building stretching thirty or forty stories into the sky. It wasn't quite as modern as the rest of the city; the walls were made of tan brick instead of slick glass. Sidney scanned the directory on the intercom by the door until he found the name he was looking for:

_1712 – Butz, Seymour_

He rolled his eyes and pressed the button. A minute later a breathy voice came over the speaker.

"What's the—"

"I don't know your goddamn pass-phrase."

There was crackly silence on the other end of the line, and then the door buzzed and clicked open.

The apartment always had a "dystopian cyberpunk" sort of feel to it. The windows had been taped over with black construction paper, and there were no proper lamps, only the glow of flatscreens and blinking LEDs. Piles of black and silver computer towers were stacked along the walls, each hooked up to multiple monitors of various sizes. Wires crossed every inch of the floor in a tangled web; most led back to a generator that was humming in the corner, hooked up to a sparking Magneton. Several fans circulated the warm, stale air.

Mathias himself was sitting at a shabby desk at the far wall, surrounded by half a dozen of the biggest monitors. He was a skinny kid, looking like he was barely out of puberty, with messy brick-red hair, thick glasses, and skin that glowed pale and sickly in the light of the screens. He swooped towards the door, stepping across the wires with practiced ease to peer at Sidney with wide, owlish eyes.

"You look terrible."

"Yeah, well. I got a little, you know, blown up." Sidney brushed his bangs away from his eyes and sighed.

"But you're alive," Matt continued.

"Why does that surprise you so much?"

Matt kept those unblinking eyes focused on him as he began to circle slowly. "Almost nobody got out alive."

"I know." He struggled to keep his tone light. "Everyone else I was with—"

"Not just them," Matt interrupted. "The rest, too. Most of the others killed all the people who worked there."

He blinked. "The others—what do you mean?"

"The other attacks. Don't you know?" Matt pushed up his glasses. "They blew up buildings all over the world. All sorts of laboratories, factories, Pokémon companies—even Silph and Devon got hit. It's all over the news."

"Oh." He hadn't had a chance to watch the news since yesterday afternoon. "Do they know who did it?"

"Not for sure. There's all sorts of theories. This one guy's saying that it's a false-flag operation by the government to increase security for—" Sidney held up a hand to stop him. Of course. This was someone who had firmly believed, for a full three months last year, that the League Champion had been replaced with a Ditto as part of some kind of Pokémon uprising. He had all of the answers, except for the sane ones.

"Someone's definitely pissed, though, right?" Sidney said. "And they—they might still want me dead. So on the off chance they're going to come after me, I think it might be good to…"

"No, I get you. I totally get you. You need to disappear." Matt bobbed his head so fervently that his thick glasses slipped down his nose. "I can help you. Just give me one minute. Two minutes."

Sidney watched as Matt began to dig through the boxes along the wall, each brimming with discarded electronics and cables. Something pricked at the skin under his right knee, and he reflexively scratched at it with his other foot, which resulted in a squeak and a weak jolt of electricity up his calf muscle. A Joltik popped out of the bottom of his pant leg and onto his sneaker, sparking indignantly.

"Here!" Matt surfaced with a battered Pokédex and an old-model cross-transceiver. He took both over to the main bank of computers and plugged them in. "Cypher, activate routine 'Red Zoroark.'"

A small, rounded blue beak emerged from the computer screen and a tinny artificial voice played through the speakers. _"Voice print USER:ARTORIAS accepted. Enter password."_ Matt's fingers flew across the keyboard. _"Password accepted. Answer the following: ONE, name of first pet. TWO, favorite musical genre. THREE, grandmother's nickname."_

Sidney rolled his eyes as the keyboard continued clacking. The number of security locks Matt put on his things was just a waste of time.

"_Security questions accepted. User is authorized. Initiating program RED ZOROARK. Device J:POKÉDEX is connected. Loading rewrite template DEFAULT_ID…"_

He knew better than to expect any of Matt's programs to finish quickly. Even the simplest ones were buried in enough bells and whistles to bring any computer grinding to a halt. He waited for somewhere from ten to twenty minutes—there was no clock—before Matt finally straightened up and stopped banging on the keyboard. He walked back to Sidney and extended both devices out to him, panting slightly. "Here you go. Fake account. Fake name. Full encryption, and no links back to the central database, so they'll never find you."

Sidney flipped open the Pokédex and scrolled through the menu. There was a picture of him on there, but with a different name next to it—apparently he was "Simon Privet" now. Underneath it were the words "licensed trainer." "I don't get it. How does this help me?"

"You can use them for everything. ID, credit card, whatever. It's all set up so all you have to do is swipe—"

"But why does it say I'm a trainer? That's not what I wanted," Sidney protested.

"It's the easiest way to go off the radar. You can travel wherever, hide wherever, and no one'll question it." Matt must have noticed the expression on Sidney's face, because he continued, "It's not like you actually have to be one. Just get, like, one Pokémon so you can beat up rich kids whenever you need money."

"Seriously, though?"

"I've done it sometimes, it's easy." Matt motioned over to the buzzing Magneton in the corner.

"But _seriously?_"

Matt scowled and crossed his arms again. "It's a good setup. The best anyone can give you. Now get out, because if they're following you, I don't want them to find me too."

There was really no arguing with him. Sidney [obediently] turned to leave. As he shut the door behind him, Matt called out, "Oh, and stay out of Pokémon centers and all the other government buildings when you can. They've got cameras _everywhere_."

* * *

For all his flaws, Matt was first-class at doing illegal things with a computer. He had even wired Sidney a small sum of money to start out with, probably siphoned some rich investment banker's off-shore accounts—Sidney didn't know how he did it, and frankly, he didn't want to know. He did wonder briefly whether this was more or less moral than getting the Elgyem to brainwashing people into giving him free stuff.

Everything was digital these days. The cross-transceiver and Pokédex were hooked straight to bank accounts and could be used to pay for anything, from bus tickets to household appliances. Sidney took full advantage of this by stopping at several stores on the way back to the hotel (after stopping at a diner, anyway). He was about to head out on what amounted to one long road trip—it was easier to think of it that way—and he wanted to be stocked up for it. He bought a backpack and filled it up with cheap clothes, basic toiletries, granola bars, a sleeping bag, and a poncho. Finally, feeling like he was sealing his own fate, he picked up two Pokéballs.

It wasn't difficult to remember what he needed. Like every other kid in Unova, he'd done this once before, setting out after middle school to go explore the region. And no matter how deeply he tried to repress those memories, the old checklist of necessities was still etched into his brain.

When he scanned his imposter Pokédex to pay for it all, he half-expected to get jumped by League police, but the kiosk just beeped cheerily and sent him on his way. It was a little disappointing. If he'd been arrested, he could've delayed returning to his psychotic jailer for a little bit longer. After he ran out of ways to postpone it, he reluctantly hopped on a bus and went on the slow ride back to face the music. And when he got back to his room and opened the door, his immediate thought was that he maybe should've been more prompt about it. The comforter and pillows were in tatters, their downy white feathers hanging in the air like snow. The blinds had been pulled off of the windows and lay tangled and broken on the ground. And in the center of it all was the Archen, shrieking and flailing in mid-air, suspended by a blue glow. The second he stepped into the room, the bird was thrust towards his face.

"_You will __**not**__ leave me with this creature again."_ The red lights on the Elgyem's hands were lit up and pulsed steadily as it maintained its psychic grip. _"I will sooner turn off its brain than listen to its noise for one more minute."_

Despite himself, Sidney cracked a grin. "He's pretty bad, isn't he? I never knew how Doug was able to handle him…" His voice trailed off as he reached the end of his sentence. His stomach felt like a pit again.

Wordlessly, Sidney took one of the Pokéballs out of his picked and tapped it against the Archen's beak. The bird's squawking dissipated as its body faded into red light and was sucked into the sphere. The Pokéball wiggled back and forth in a few token struggles, but soon fell still. He took out his Pokédex with his other hand and scanned the small transmitter on the bottom of the ball. The screen lit up with an animation of an Audino rolling a Pokéball back and forth.

_Processing. Please wait…_

He noticed the Elgyem was staring at him with an odd intensity; his head was being lightly squeezed again. "It's a Pokéball. Kind of like a—"

"_I know what it is."_

"Oh." He shrugged. Didn't know if they had them on your 'planet.'" The Pokédex beeped as new information appeared on the touchscreen.

_Archen | Male | Estimated Level 3_

_Nickname?_

_[YES] [NO]_

He selected "yes," and a virtual keyboard popped up. He'd never been great at thinking up nicknames, but he knew what to call this one. He picked out the letters one at a time.

_A-r-c-h-e-r_

When he finished, he turned back to the Elgyem and drew the second Pokéball from his pocket. "Now if you want to—"

"_**NO."**_ The ball flew from his hand and slammed into the wall, cracking apart at its hinge and falling to the floor. A second later, he found himself pinned up next to the new dent in the wall, the Elgyem's invisible psychic hand on his throat.

"Okay! Okay. Relax. I was just kidding." And maybe _hoping_, just a little. "I'll scan you in manually, all right?"

"_I do not belong to you, and I will not be labeled as such"_

"I know, but if I don't have you registered in here, people are going to assume I stole you or something. I'll get the cops called on me, and I know you said you don't want the police involved in this."

It stared at him for a while before releasing its grip slightly, just enough for him to breathe freely again. _"Then do what you must. But I will not be held captive, and I will not answer to you."_

"I didn't think you would." He pocketed the Pokéball again slowly, like he was holstering a gun, and held up the Pokédex again, scanning the Elgyem through the viewfinder. Without a Pokéball interface, the analysis was slower and less accurate, but it was better than nothing. After several minutes, the new information showed up.

_Elgyem | Female | Estimated Level 10_

_Nickname?_

_[YES] [NO]_

His mouth twisted up in surprise. "Huh. Anyone ever tell you you don't act like much of a girl?"

_She_ seemed to bristle a bit. _"Our society does not conform to your primitive human classification of gender roles—"_

"Yeah, you know what, never mind. I think I'm starting to see it." Living around college campuses for so long, he'd run into more than his share of angry feminists. Still, it was disconcerting to think of this psychic alien blob as anything but an _it_. "So do you have a name?"

"_Yes."_ Instantly a stream of odd symbols and shapes began pouring into his head, something resembling letters, but not belonging to any alphabet he knew of.

"You know I have no idea what that means."

"_In your language…"_ She shifted, and the stream of data retreated from his mind. _"The closest approximation would be 'six-nu-forty-nine sigma five-rho-thirty-three-dash-six-phi-twenty-seven delta forty-nine thirty-nine Jordani alpha.'"_

His mouth was hanging open. He shut it. "That's a name?"

"_It is the designation for my bloodline and station. It is not meant to be pronounced."_

"O-kay… I'm sure it's a great name on your planet, but even if I could remember all of that, the dex only gives you ten spaces for a name." He flipped it around to show it to her. "Mind if I just call you Jordan or something?"

"_That is the name of our __**star**__,"_ she said, sounding almost insulted.

"All right, then, six… What did you say? Sixty-nine? You want me to just mash some numbers in here and call it a day?"

"_No. To do this would be sacrilege."_

"Then what? Help me out there. Is there something you want to be called?"

She went silent and still for several minutes. He could hear the static hiss from her thoughts in his mind, though he still couldn't make out any words. At last, her eyes opened and focused on him again.

"_Nerva."_ The word appeared in the back of his head as she spoke it.

"That's your name?"

"_It is your understanding of a name."_

"Close enough." He thumbed it into the Pokédex, then snapped it shut and put it back in his pocket. So that was done—what now?

He probably had to feed Archer. The bird had always been notoriously picky back at the lab, so that would be fun. Before that, he would have to bring him to a Pokémon center and get his wing looked at, so that someone besides himself could get their hand torn apart trying to help him… It was easy enough to focus on immediate errands. He'd deal with food and medical attention for his dumb Archen first, and then he could handle the terrorists and aliens later, if he ever got around to it. With that comforting thought in mind, Sidney left the room, the newly-named Nerva floating silently behind him.


End file.
